President Javier Milei’s decision to veto María Verónica Michelli’s candidacy for judge, allegedly for being the sister-in-law of journalist Hugo Alconada Mon, generated a controversy that threatened to reach scandalous edges. But the real earthquake did not come from the court case itself. It came from the person who decided to stand on the opposite sidewalk: Patricia Bullrich.
The official argument for withdrawing the document has a logic that the Government did not take long to make public. From the Casa Rosada they maintain that Michelli presents an insurmountable conflict of interest: that a judge with that family connection join a federal court is not an administrative detail but a fundamental republican problem. The ruling party goes further: they interpret the pressure to support the document as an example of the power of the journalistic corporation defending its own interests through the judicial system. The judge would not be a victim of arbitrariness, in that reading, but rather the instrument of an influence that the Government decided not to validate.
Bullrich didn’t see it that way. Michelli’s nomination had been promoted during the government of Mauricio Macri and then stopped during the administration of Alberto Fernández, which for the senator accredited a career that could not be erased by the brother-in-law’s last name.
Gerardo Milman, former Deputy Minister of Security and current advisor to Bullrich in the Senate, explained it in El Disparador, the program hosted by Maxi Sardío on Delta 90.3: “What has happened in the last few moments is a conscientious objection regarding the document of a candidate for national senator for an oral court, who had gathered a majority of signatures. If one looks at the Constitution, to withdraw a document that is already in the Senate, the agreement of the majority of the Senate is required.” And he went further: “The position on the merits of a candidate to be a judge of the nation does not define the political project.”
What followed was a high voltage sequence. Bullrich confirmed that he presented Milei with his resignation as head of the La Libertad Avanza bloc in the upper house. “Every good person, when they have to make known to the President a position different from theirs, makes their resignation available,” the senator justified. Milei presented her view on Michelli’s conflict of interest with the same firmness, but the resignation offer was unsuccessful. Milman captured it precisely on Delta air: “The president kept talking, he didn’t take Senator Bullrich’s dissent.” Gesture done, gesture filed. The board remained standing, with two irreconcilable readings of the same file.
The episode also revealed internal friction with the Minister of Justice, Juan Bautista Mahiques, whom several legislators blame for not having reviewed the candidates’ background before sending the specifications to the Senate. “By googling the names they would have saved the President this problem,” said one of the pro-government senators. A crisis that, in its origin, has more incompetence than conspiracy, although the Government prefers the second reading.
The next chapter was the photo. Karina Milei received Patricia Bullrich in her office on the first floor of Balcarce 50, and the meeting sought to show unity and clear up doubts about the legislator’s continuity in the ruling bloc. Bullrich advertised it in X with a phrase that mixes loyalty and positioning: “Meeting with Karina, always working together for the transformations led by President Milei.” Milman was discreet in El Disparador: “I did not accompany Patricia’s meeting with Karina Milei, it was private. I am Patricia’s advisor in the Senate.” Confirmation without the content: the meeting existed, it was between the two of them, and what was discussed stayed in the office of the general secretary of the Presidency.
That Karina Milei receives Bullrich privately and that the meeting is photographed and published is no small gesture. It is a signal into the space: Bullrich continues, the tension is managed, the photo replaces the statement. In the Buenos Aires assembly they also highlighted that the tensions did not modify the possibility of Bullrich being La Libertad Avanza’s candidate for head of Government in 2027.
And therein lies the key to everything. Milman said it honestly: “In this country, we come out of one election and start thinking about the next. Politics talks about candidates every day.” In this framework, the question about Bullrich’s real legislative weight is central. The response was cautious but revealing: “I don’t know how many deputies Patricia has today. There are several, but I don’t have that count, which is a dynamic figure.”
A dynamic figure. In that expression lies all the realism of Argentine politics: loyalties are counted but they move, blocs are negotiated but fragmented. Bullrich kicked the libertarian board with a conscientious objection, offered his resignation, listened to the President defend the conflict of interest as a central argument, met alone with Karina Milei and left the week with his position intact and his political profile higher than before. For someone who was supposedly in a secondary role, the balance is not minor.
Image gallery
